Sunday, July 01, 2007
PicasaWeb Downloader

Quick download link (v1.1)

I wanted to simple way to download an entire PicasaWeb album. Right-click and save simply will not do, installing the Picasa application is completely out of the question (I use FastStone, in case you were wondering) and I couldn't find any easy way of doing this, so I whipped up a quick and dirty application. It's pretty self-explanatory, really:

picasawebdownloader

Download the application (source included) here.

I also used the chance to give #Develop a serious whirl, and I can honestly say that it's damn impressive; in several hours of use the only real qualms I've had with it are the non-configurable keyboard bindings (at least I couldn't find any configuration menu for this; it wouldn't be an issue if the default bindings weren't slightly different from what I'm used to) and the lack of immediate/watch debug windows. The dialog editor is full-featured and the environment seems to be quite responsive and robust. I really am impressed.

Update (20-Aug-2007): Version 1.1 is now downloadable. I've added support for AuthKeys (as per skolima's request) so you should now be able to download private albums as well (assuming you have the appropriate key). Also added a compiled binary to the archive, doh!

Development | Software
Sunday, July 01, 2007 2:28:06 AM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)  #    Comments [25]  |  Related posts:
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Wednesday, August 15, 2007 3:03:45 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Thank you for this little utility :-) It works fine on linux as well (using mono), but to compile with xbuild one has to fix a typo in .csproj file (replace .Target with .target).

Could you perhaps add the ability to handle private albums (i.e. having ?authkey=XxX at the end of album url and requiring authentication)?
skolima
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 4:11:51 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Possible, although I honestly don't know what it entails. I'll try and give it a shot over the weekend (if you could provide me with a link to one of these by e-mail it would help facilitate things -- I don't actually use Picasa[Web] :-))
Tomer GAbel | tomerAT NOSPAMtomergabel dot com
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 6:46:54 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
http://picasaweb.google.com/skolima/HiddenAlbum?authkey=rNwiEhX9K9E
skolima
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 7:26:14 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
As a side note, your blog seems a bit borked. Google results point to rss feeds instead of content, captcha always rejects my first try (and accepts the second one) and, most important, coComment/co.mments notifications do not work.
skolima
Thursday, August 16, 2007 10:01:38 AM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Thanks, I didn't realize those issues existed. Will fix.
Tomer GAbel | tomerAT NOSPAMtomergabel dot com
Monday, August 20, 2007 1:18:09 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Well AuthKey support is in, now just to fix the blog issues you mentioned :-) Enjoy...
Tomer Gabel | tomerAT NOSPAMtomergabel dot com
Monday, August 20, 2007 9:17:02 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Works fine under linux. Thanks again!
skolima
Monday, August 20, 2007 9:17:39 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Works fine under linux. Thanks again!
skolima
Saturday, September 01, 2007 10:35:10 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
I have kinda silly question, how to use this downloader after I extract it ?
James | joosep90AT NOSPAMmsn dot com
Saturday, September 01, 2007 11:06:02 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Well, the easiest thing is to extract PicasaWebDownloader.exe from the archive somewhere, then Start->Run (for Windows XP) or just Start (Vista) and type on "<folder>\PicasaWebDownloader.exe <PicasaWeb Link>".

For example, if you've extracted the file to C:\Temp you might run: "c:\temp\PicasaWebDownloader.exe http://www.picasaweb.com/...". You can also have it download the files to a different location by adding a target folder to the end of the command (e.g. C:\Users\YourName\Pictures).

Let me know if you have any more trouble.
Tomer Gabel | tomerAT NOSPAMtomergabel dot com
Sunday, September 02, 2007 4:29:07 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
well,actually yea I still have some problems, these problems consist few different errors :P For now of all versions how I typed it in run, I think the last one should be best of them, looks more correct than others, thats what I think only. Anyway, how i typed in:

"D:\PicasaWebDownloader.exe http://picasaweb.google.com/JamestheFox/Igast"

and error:

D:\PicasaWebDownloader.exe http:/ is not accessible.
The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.

First i wasnt sure if " "are needed, i think they are right?
And finally i extract it to D disk because i wasnt sure can i type exactly like you, just C:\Temp or C:\Documents and Settings\KODU\Local Settings\Temp (where temp is locate on my pc) Well i tried both several times anyway. And does spaces matters? between Doc and Settings example, tried both again.
James | joosep90AT NOSPAMmsn dot com
Sunday, September 02, 2007 5:58:06 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Spaces definitely matter - try enclosing both the PicasaWeb link and the target folder in quotes, e.g. d:\picasawebdownloader.exe "http://..." "c:\document and settings\..." and see if it works for you.

I'm starting to think this thing could use a GUI, but I'm horrible at coding those :-)
Tomer Gabel | tomerAT NOSPAMtomergabel dot com
Friday, October 05, 2007 1:50:39 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Interesting bug: some albums (like this) include files with same names (like "01.jpg"). When I downloaded the album using Picasa, i've got only 80 files (must be 300) - because files with the same names was rewritten. And this program does not seem to fix this bug. May be, it will be better, if this:

::program.cs::
180: string filename = Uri.UnescapeDataString( uri.Segments[ uri.Segments.GetUpperBound( 0 ) ] );

will be repaced by something like this:

180: string filename = %some_random_number_generator% + Uri.UnescapeDataString( uri.Segments[ uri.Segments.GetUpperBound( 0 ) ] );


Sorry my english. Original russian version of this message:

Забавный баг как в огиринальной Пикасе, так и в этой проге: в альбомах встречаются файлы с одинаковыми именами. Когда качаешь альмом целиком, дубликаты переписываются, и в результате часть картинок теряется. Например, при скачивании этого альбома из 300 фоток остается только 80. Надо бы какой-нибудь генератор случайных имен, или проверку на существование файлов с таким именем в папке загрузки, с последующим переименованием, если они есть.
gildedgod | gildedgodAT NOSPAMgmail dot com
Monday, November 05, 2007 10:22:30 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Thanks.
I made two little changes regex for my use:
- google URLs can use different TLDs, not only .com (e.g. google.pl or google.co.uk) - all of them work, so it's sufficient to recognize them and use google.com afterwards
- authkeys can contain (or at least begin with) dash character, which is non-word

You can get patch from:
http://cvs.pld-linux.org/SOURCES/PicasaWebDownloader-url.patch?rev=1.1
Jakub Bogusz | qbooshAT NOSPAMpld-linux dot org
Monday, November 26, 2007 6:02:01 AM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Everytime i try to run it, i get the "the application failed to initialize properly" error message. What am I doing wrong????
dan | firekatdAT NOSPAMgmail dot com
Monday, December 17, 2007 6:05:49 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Nice. Just what I was looking for!
Nighted
Monday, December 17, 2007 6:18:20 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Oh, BTW, is there a silent switch or a switch to run with the console minimized? Thanks!
Nighted
Friday, January 04, 2008 10:24:19 AM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
keep getting unrecognized URL, even when i use the URL inthe screen shot. tried "" and without, with a target and without, RSS and noraml URLS, same error. Running in windows.
TB
Friday, January 04, 2008 10:40:02 AM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
my bad it does work, needed to move the program directory to root folder
TB
Saturday, February 09, 2008 11:35:43 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
sick just what i needed
forgoten
Saturday, February 23, 2008 2:20:25 AM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Great job!!! Thanks. Much appreciated.
Lorenzo
Wednesday, April 02, 2008 11:30:39 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
The option to download full picture album used to be on the Picasweb album page. What happened to this option that now we have to use a stand alone program??
I used your program and it works
To where it was moved or just removed by Google?
Thnks Oddedi
oddedi | oddedAT NOSPAMbezeqint dot net
Thursday, April 03, 2008 8:50:49 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
I am just searching for this kind of applicaion. It simply works without any glitches.
Suresh | sureshkumar dot kotaAT NOSPAMgmail dot com
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 6:33:21 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Hi,
Thanks a LOT for this program, it's made life a whole lot easier for me! Downloading humongous albums is no longer a nightmare, thanks!!

Take care,
Guntas
Guntas | guntasAT NOSPAMgmail dot com
Friday, September 05, 2008 5:52:13 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Thank you for a really good tool!
Aarne | aarneAT NOSPAMtoompark dot pri dot ee
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